In 2000, the OSSM Foundation Faculty Endowment was established and invested through the Foundation’s asset management team to achieve long-term stability for the school and to ensure that the OSSM Foundation will be able to help school officials maintain, for years to come, the exceptional caliber of faculty OSSM has employed since the Inaugural Faculty set the highest possible standards in the early 1990’s.
Please accept our deepest gratitude to you who have invested for years to help build the Faculty Endowment. We are still working to grow it, and it is now disbursing funds annually to help retain the very best, largely PhD faculty to ensure bright young Oklahoma students will always have access to more academic rigor in math and science than is available in their traditional high school.
Please know, too, that since 2000 grants and other gifts made to the OSSM Faculty “Bridge” Fund have made possible modest annual supplemental stipends until the Faculty Endowment could “come online” and continue this program in perpetuity. The Faculty “Bridge” Fund will continue to allow special grants to expand faculty support in the short term as the school grows to capacity.
Together we met the initial 2000 goal of $6 million in 2013 and reached the subsequent goal of $10 million in 2021. Our current goal is $18 million.
As of the end of 2022, we have raised $10.7 million toward our $18 million goal! Contributions represent $5.7 million of this total value, and the rest has come from investment proceeds—It is this latter portion from which conservative annual distributions are drawn.
The OSSM Faculty Endowment and its partner “Bridge” program make possible the modest, merit-based annual stipends that are so very important to OSSM’s hiring process and to retaining the very best, largely PhD faculty who are devoted to OSSM and its students and to their role in building a strong future for our students, our state, and our nation.
Thank you!
Giving totaling $150,000 to the Faculty Endowment will stimulate a Faculty Award, honoring an outstanding faculty member in the donor’s name!
- OGE Energy Faculty Award (2012) honoring Professor Charles Dillard, Computer Science (Dillard postcard))
- Devon Energy Faculty Award (2007) honoring Dr. Kurt T. Bachmann, Physics (Bachmann postcard)
- Edna McDuffie Manning Faculty Award (2006) honoring Professor Yunhua Feng, Mathematics (Y. Feng postcard)
- Awesome Men’s Faculty Award (2004) honoring Dr. Fazlur Rahman, Chemistry (Rahman postcard)
- Edith Kinney Gaylord Faculty Award (2004, Inasmuch Foundation) honoring Dr. Dorothy Dodd, Humanities (Dodd postcard)
- Awesome Friends Faculty Award (2004) honoring Dr. Ann Dell, Biology (Dell postcard)
- OSSM Foundation Faculty Award (2002, Anonymous donor) honoring Dr. Mark Li, Human Biology (Li postcard)
- McCasland Foundation Faculty Award (2001) honoring Dr. Xifan Liu, Physics (Liu postcard)
- Ann Simmons Alspaugh Faculty Award (2000) honoring Professor Chengde Feng, Mathematics (C. Feng postcard)
Private partnership is absolutely critical! OSSM’s state high school salaries cannot compare with what our accomplished faculty could earn in a university environment. The average Oklahoma high school teacher salary is approximately $46,000 right now, where even assistant professors at the University of Oklahoma earn about $65,100 per year–$60,000 at the University of Central Oklahoma. Our faculty is the backbone of OSSM–They make OSSM one of the top high schools in the nation, public or private. Some 70% hold doctorates in the disciplines they teach. Faculty members are much more than teachers to our students–They tutor students in evening study halls, mentor seniors’ individual research projects and many provide stability, discipline and support as dorm parents. It is imperative to the continued success of the OSSM program that we keep these remarkable professors on staff.
Please designate your gift for “Faculty Endowment” to keep OSSM strong and transforming countless more students’ lives for generations to come.
